1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a facsimile mail system and, more particularly, to a facsimile mail system capable of managing facsimile mail designation errors with ease.
2. Description of the related Art
Facsimile mail equipment established at a mail center is connected to a telephone exchange which in turn is connected to a plurality of subscriber facsimile machines (hereinafter called fax machines). The equipment is capable of broadcasting information simultaneously to a plurality of fax machines, storing in an appropriate order the information that may be received substantially at the same time, and transmitting the stored information to destinations in the order in which the information was received. Such facsimile mail equipment is included in a facsimile mail system that illustratively distributes in-house documents and slips within a corporation and, in the case of securities firms, sends securities-related information to subscribed customers.
The conventional facsimile mail system is operated generally by use of a push-button signal (hereinafter called a PB signal) or an optical mark reader sheet (hereinafter called an OMR sheet). The PB signal is generated by pushing push-buttons of a telephone set. The OMR sheet contains destination address information and is attached to the first page of the document to be transmitted. This type of facsimile mail system requires a function by which to manage push-button operation errors or OMR sheet designation errors so as to facilitate investigation of faults that may occur. Preferably, the system should also be equipped with an ability to check line quality without recourse to specialized measuring instruments.
As mentioned, there are two ways to activate and make use of the facsimile mail service. One way is for the user to call the mail center and to press push-buttons of the telephone set for entering a stipulated PB signal string according to the voice guidance sent from the mail center. The other way is for the user to attach an OMR sheet to the first page of the document to be transmitted and to forward the document along with the OMR sheet to the mail center. Conventional facsimile mail systems record the history of communications over each of the lines connected to fax machines.
Although conventional facsimile mail systems record communicative history of each of the lines attached, they lack the capabilities of recording the history of operations for utilizing the mail service, the results of acknowledging the designation by OMR sheet, the transmitting parties' names, or line quality readings. The lack of these capabilities has led to the perception of the following major disadvantages of the prior art:
When the PB signal is used to utilize the facsimile mail system, the user may commit errors inputting the signal by clumsily referring to the instruction manual or relying on his uncertain memory. For example, entering a wrong destination name in keeping with the input conditions causes the transmitted document to bypass the correct destination and reach an unintended party. In that case, the mail center cannot discern the erroneous operation well enough to attribute it to a user error, to poor line quality or to the system's faulty processing. That is, a clear-cut answer to that went wrong cannot be obtained.
Where the OMR sheet is used to operate the facsimile mail system, the mail equipment may not recognize the mark depending on its density, length and position upon mark entry by the user into the OMR sheet. Furthermore, the mark may not be recognized due to poor line quality. As in the case of the PB signal, the mail center cannot discern the erroneous operation well enough to attribute it definitively to whoever or whatever is responsible. Again, a clear-cut answer to what or who caused the error is unavailable.
Fax mail is intrinsically vulnerable to various kinds of poor line quality, i.e., aging-caused line degeneration, radio wave-induced line noise from the outside, or line noise due to voltage fluctuations (e.g., caused by elevator operation). In such cases, part of the information transmitted may become missing, or too many bit errors may render fax communication impossible.
To avoid the above problems requires carrying out line maintenance conscientiously and unremittingly using dedicated measuring instruments that examine selected communication paths for line quality. Taking these measurements--or merely installing the necessary instruments for that matter--calls for a temporary stoppage of the communication service. In addition, it takes unacceptably many man-hours to perform the measurements on each of the communication paths designated.